About Me

My life was described by one of my editors as “impossibly exotic” – although really it was not my life, but me, that was the exotic, the uprooted plant, the one who didn’t belong, always living in someone else’s backyard...
Now I am back in Australia, the returning native learning to live where I was born. Writer, traveler, environmentalist. Author of The Isles of Glory trilogy (The Aware, Gilfeather, The Tainted); The Mirage Makers trilogy (Heart of the Mirage, The Shadow of Tyr, Song of the Shiver Barrens) and, writing as Glenda Noramly, a stand-alone book Havenstar. The latest trilogy is called The Watergivers in Australia and the Stormlord trilogy elsewhere: THE LAST STORMLORD, STORMLORD RISING, STORMLORD'S EXILE

LATEST:
THE FORSAKEN LANDS
The story of a clash of cultures and magic as traders and buccaneers of the Va-cherished Hemisphere hunt for spices and wealth in the Va-forsaken half of the world ... even as the unidentified darkness of plague and murder stalks their own land.
THE LASCAR'S DAGGER available worldwide now!

Saturday, June 16, 2012

No, nothing so prosaic as a dog or a cat of some fish in a tank. Last night I spent much time chasing a tree frog around my study, and through the forest of wires and cords under the desk, even across the keyboard of my Mac...

This thing has legs on it like a high jumper and can leave me standing flat-footed any time. It also has suckered toes that enable it to go straight up vertical walls and windows. In the end, I gave up. Twenty-four hours later I have finally managed to shut it in the bathroom with the window open, in the faint hope that it will actually leave.

Earlier today I was sitting in the lounge room when I heard what sounded like a dried leaf being hustled by a wind along the brick-paving outside. Only there wasn't a wind. I stood up, just in time to see a treeshrew* hauling a large, very dry leaf from the guava tree over the doorstep into the lounge room, which struck me as a strange thing for it to be doing.

Treeshrews are hysterical little creatures that live in a heightened state of terror, so he shot off in a blur of fur the moment I moved. (Which is why I have never managed to get a decent photo of one.)

It wasn't until later that I discovered she must have been leaf-moving for quite some time because the bottom shelf of my bookcase had a stash of dry leaves hidden behind the books... Just as well I found out before she gave birth.

(*that's the misnamed creature that doesn't live in trees {at least ours don't} and isn't a shrew, or even a rodent of any kind. It looks a bit like a slim squirrel with a pointed face)

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

All too often, the only fantasy we read is that written by white Westerners with a Christian or Jewish religous/cultural background. It is therefore a joy to read the occasional book, written in English, that taps into another culture, penned by someone who has more than a touristy knowledge of it.

I'm white and Western, but I have lived 80% of my (long!) adult life in Muslim and Asian or African societies, married to someone who is neither white nor western nor Christian. Which is one of the reasons I try to tap into this experience in my world building. Certainly, I will be doing this in my new trilogy, and the title of the first book, "The Lascar's Dagger" gives a hint of this. There's even a possibility that somewhere in my nuclear-scientist husband's ancestry, there was a lascar... My husband was after all, born in a place which was once one of the world's great ports (Malacca), and his lineage originates from Muslim Aceh in Sumatra.

But I digress. This blog post is not about me, but to point in the direction of another writer, American-born, but of Arab descent, who has also tapped into his non-white, non-western, non-Christian cultural background with his first novel.

"The Crescent Moon Kingdoms, land of djenn and ghuls, holy warriors and
heretics, Khalifs and killers, is at the boiling point of a power
struggle between the iron-fisted Khalif and the mysterious master thief
known as the Falcon Prince. In the midst of this brewing rebellion a
series of brutal supernatural murders strikes at the heart of the
Kingdoms. It is up to a handful of heroes to learn the truth behind
these killings...."

Links

Awards

BEST FANTASY NOVEL OF THE YEAR Shortlisted Finalist2003: for The Aware; 2004: for The Tainted; 2006: for Heart of the Mirage; 2007: for The Song of the Shiver Barrens; 2009: for The Last Stormlord 2010: for Stormlord Rising 2011: for Stormlord's Exile